McAfee makes a Linux AV product [LWN.net]

McAfee makes a Linux AV product

Posted Apr 9, 2006 22:31 UTC (Sun) by pr1268 (subscriber, #24648)
In reply to: big deal by smoogen
Parent article: Crossplatform virus - the latest proof of concept

Being a University student, I get the privilege of using the campus-wide license for McAfee Antivirus. Since I only use Linux, I was thrilled to discover that not only does McAfee make a Unix version (works on Linux, FreeBSD, HP-UX, AIX, and Solaris), but also that the University I attend provides this version alongside their Windows/Mac offering.

I suppose the only down side is that this is presumably a corporate/enterprise version. It's not like I could walk into $COMMERCIAL_RETAILER and pick up a Linux copy... :-(

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McAfee makes a Linux AV product

Posted Apr 10, 2006 15:49 UTC (Mon) by rickmoen (subscriber, #6943) [Link]

pr1268 wrote:

I suppose the only down side is that this is presumably a corporate/enterprise version. It's not like I could walk into $COMMERCIAL_RETAILER and pick up a Linux copy... :-(

Something for you to ponder: One of the glories of running Linux is that you can avoid the need to run unauditable code with significant privilege (and can avoid running it at all, in many cases).

But here, you're pretty much proposing to run with root-user authority a proprietary, binary codebase from a proprietary-software vendor whose business integrity, along with almost all of its competitors, is already specifically subject to question, concerning the Sony rootkit scandal (a point Schneier made quite eloquently, at the time). And you're thrilled about this? Me, I'd go to great lengths to avoid exercising that option.

Rick Moen
rick@linuxmafia.com

McAfee makes a Linux AV product

Posted Apr 11, 2006 0:50 UTC (Tue) by drag (subscriber, #31333) [Link]

Exactly!

All of these products seem to me to have a proven security track record.. A bad track record, that is.

These things have openned up holes in root in the past for potential attackers.

If I worked somewere that required certain types of anti-virus stuff to be installed, I'd install it... in a chroot'd environment seperate from everything else and do my best to figure out how to make it work as a regular user through trickery or some VM or whatnot so that I could have it functional, yet seperate.

Although I doubt that would be to popular among management...

In light of the threats that viruses can pose I think that Gnome and KDE should look at integrating open source, passive, antivirus protection.

Things like having email scanning with Evolution similar to how it supports anti-spam scanning. Files being downloaded could be then scanned.

Or maybe integrate it with the FAM support so that files being added to the home directory will be scanned automaticly irregradless of their source. I don't think that this should be hard to do and ClamAV will probably work very well.

This should, I figure, be optional and turned off by default.

This should provide assurance to new users and also prevent situations were Linux user "A" finds funny picture and text and sends it to Linux user "B". Linux user "B" thinks it's funny and sends it to Windows user "C". Windows user "C" then becomes infected from virus sent to them from Linux user A and B, which then goes on to infect everybody else's windows PC including customer's. Of course the virus doesn't affect the Linux users at all, but that's not realy that wonderfull that they sent a Windows user a attatchment that does.